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Meeting with the winner of the NCN award

Meeting with the winner of the NCN award. Join us on 15 December at 6:00 PM for an online “Complexity Economics: the Future Is Now” lecture which will be delivered by Karolina Safarzyńska. Participants will be able to ask questions during the session. Karolina Safarzyńska is a professor at the University of Warsaw, specialising in complexity, behavioural and experimental economics and climate changes. In October she received the NCN Award which honours the best young researchers working in Poland. This and her other achievements had her ranked as one of Forbes Poland’s 100 most powerful women.

The streaming of the lecture will start at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held as part of the “Science at the Centre” series of lectures organised by the National Science Centre and the Copernicus Centre Foundation. The lectures are streamed on YouTube Copernicus Center. The series was launched in 2021. The first lecture this year was delivered by Piotr Wcisło. The last one will be held on 21 December. The lecture will be given by Michal Bogdziewicz, a forest ecologist associated with the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

More information about the series.

Recordings of previous lectures.

POLONEZ BIS Call 1 Fellows met in Krakow

We would like to thank all the guests who participated in the first POLONEZ BIS Kick-off meeting on 12-13 December.

Fellows and Mentors whose research projects started this fall or will take off in January 2023 took part in the meeting. During the two-day event, the scientists got to know other Fellows, met institutional partners from the Startup Hub Poland Foundation and the Polish Women Scientists Network Foundation, and took part in the workshop on career development, conducted by POLONEZ BIS programme's third partner – CRAC-Vitae.

All presentations will be sent to Kick-off meeting’s participants via e-mail.

SONATINA 7

Read more about SONATINA 7

15 December 2022

The National Science Centre (NCN) hereby launches the SONATINA 7 call for research projects. The objective of the call is to support the career development of early-stage researchers by creating opportunities for full-time employment and research in Poland and enabling them to gain knowledge and experience during fellowships in first-rate foreign research institutions.

The call is addressed at individuals who have been granted their PhD degree in the proposal submission year or within 3 years prior to the proposal submission year (between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2022) or will be granted their PhD by 30 June 2023. The 3-year period may be extended by any career breaks laid down in the Resolution.

Employment under a full-time employment contract must be planned for the principal investigator in the host institution for the project other than the one from which the principal investigator has earned a PhD degree. The principal investigator must complete a foreign fellowship of 3 to 6 months in a foreign research institution.

The Council of the National Science Centre has allocated PLN 20,000,000 for research projects to be carried out under the SONATINA 7 call for proposals.

Proposals must be submitted electronically via OSF available at: https://osf.opi.org.pl pursuant to the proposal submission procedure.

The call for proposals in the OSF submission system closes on 15 March 2023, 4 p.m.

Please read the call documents provided in this call text.

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NCN Council has decided that proposals submitted to NCN calls must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities.

Proposals providing for such collaboration shall be rejected as ineligible .

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Eligible applicants

Proposals for funding of a research project under SONATINA 7 may be submitted by entities laid down in the NCN Act (hereinafter: “applicants”), for whom funding of the research project will not constitute state aid, namely:

universities;
federations of science and HE entities;
research institutes of the Polish Academy of Science operating pursuant to the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1796, as amended);
research operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1383, as amended);
international research institutes established pursuant to separate acts, operating in the Republic of Poland;

5a. Łukasiewicz Centre operating pursuant to the Act on the Łukasiewicz Research Network of 21 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 2098);

5b. institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network;

Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences;
other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis;
groups of entities (at least two entities mentioned in sections 1-9 or at least one institution as such together with at least one company);
scientific and industrial centres within the meaning of the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1383, as amended);
research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences within the meaning of the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1796);
scientific libraries;
companies operating as R&D centres within the meaning of the Act on Certain Forms of Support for Innovative Activity of 30 May 2008 (Journal of Laws of 2021, item 706);
legal entities established with registered office in Poland;

13a. President of the Central Office of Measures;

natural persons.

Principal investigator

Principal investigators must be individuals who meet both of the following conditions:

have earned a PhD degree in the proposal submission year or within 3 years prior to the proposal submission year (between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2022) or will earn a PhD degree by 30 June 2023. The 3-year period may be extended by any career breaks laid down in the Resolution

and/or

will be employed in the research project pursuant to a full-time employment contract, on terms and conditions laid down in the Regulations , for the research project performance period. They must be employed by another institution than the one from which they have earned their PhD degree.

Restrictions on submitting proposals under the call

Restrictions on submitting proposals are described in detail in Chapter III of the Regulations.

One can act as the principal investigator in a SONATINA project only once.

Research topics covered by the project

The project must cover either basic research or applied research.

Proposals may be submitted to the call covering research in any of 26 NCN review panels, within the three core areas:

HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences;
ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering;
NZ – Life Sciences.

Please note that the review panels have been amended to include ST11: material engineering and the amended review panels have been in effect as of 15 December 2022.

Project duration

A research project can be planned for a period of either 24 or 36 months.

Foreign fellowship duration

A foreign fellowship may last between 3 to 6 months.

Project budget planning

The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research and based on realistic calculations. No maximum or minimum amount of the project budget has been set for SONATINA 7. If an unjustified budget is planned, the proposal may be rejected.

Costs in the project include direct costs and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

remuneration for the principal investigator,
cost of principal investigator’s mandatory foreign fellowship,
remuneration for co-investigators in the project, the so-called additional remuneration,
purchase of materials and small equipment,
outsourced services,
business trips, visits and consultations,
compensation for collective investigators and
other costs crucial to the research project which comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre.

The project budget must not include the funds for the purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices or software.

PLEASE NOTE: The publication cost of monographs containing project results (for the purposes of §10 of the Regulation on evaluation of the quality of research activity by the Minister of Science and Higher Education of 22 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 392) is not eligible until positively reviewed by the NCN.

Indirect costs include:

indirect cost of Open Access (up to 2% of direct costs) that may be designated only for the cost of open access to publications or research data;
other indirect costs (up to 20% of direct costs) that may be spent on costs that are related indirectly to the research project, including the cost of open access to publications and research data.
the institution must agree with the principal investigator the coverage of at least 25% of the funds arising from the other indirect costs actually incurred in the project. Expenses incurred from that amount must meet the eligibility criteria arising hereunder.

Under SONATINA 7, funds must be planned for:

employment of the principal investigator pursuant to a full-time employment contract for the research project performance period, in accordance with the Regulations;
research projects, in accordance with the budget laid down in the proposal; and
principal investigator’s foreign fellowship at the foreign research institution of his choice, covering:
a)living expenses at the foreign research institution hosting the fellowship, calculated as a lump sum of:

− 12,000 PLN per each month of the fellowship,

− 3,000 PLN per each month of stay at the fellowship location:

(i) of a minor child of the principal investigator or under legal guardianship of the principal investigator or

(ii) of the guardian of the principal investigator if the principal investigator is a holder of a certificate of severe or moderate disability, multiplied by the percentage correction rate set for a given country

b) return travel expenses calculated as a lump sum of:

− 1,000 to 10,000 PLN, depending on the distance between the participating entity and the research institution hosting the fellowship.

Please note that only the principal investigator may be employed with remuneration paid from the pool allocated for full-time salaries. Full-time salaries for post-docs, senior researchers or persons employed at special auxiliary posts must not be planned under the SONATINA call.

Additional remuneration can be used for salaries for students and PhD students.

NCN scholarships and doctoral fellowships must not be covered by the project.

PLEASE NOTE: The cost of open access to publications subject to the NCN’s Open Access Policy must not be planned as direct costs.

Application for State aid

State aid must not be applied for under the call. For more information, please refer to the State Aid section.

Information and annexes required in the proposal

Required information and annexes are laid down in §6 of the Annex to Resolution No 121/2022 of 10 November 2022.

The proposal form is available here.

Proposal evaluation procedure

Proposals are subject to an eligibility check and merit-based evaluation.

The eligibility check is performed by the scientific coordinators. Only complete proposals that meet all the requirements set forth in the call text may be recommended for merit-based evaluation. Proposals may also be rejected as not eligible at a later stage of evaluation.

The merit-based evaluation of proposals is performed in two stages.

During stage I, proposals are evaluated by the Expert Team established by the NCN based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the full project description. Each proposal is evaluated by two members of the Expert Team acting independently. In the case of a proposal which is assigned an auxiliary NCN review panel specifying disciplines covered by NCN review panels other than the one to which the proposal was submitted, the chair of the Expert Team may decide to request a review from a member of another Expert Team (the so-called interdisciplinary proposals).

At the first meeting, the Expert Team compiles a list of proposals approved for the second stage of evaluation.

During stage II, proposals are referred to at least two reviewers who draft their individual reviews based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the short project description. In addition, the principal investigator is interviewed.

An interview with the principal investigator at stage II of merit-based evaluation is held in English and is forecasted for June/July 2023.

Based on the reviews, results of the interviews and discussions at the second meeting, the Expert Team compiles a ranking list of proposals, specifying proposals recommended for funding.

To find out more on the proposal evaluation procedure, please read the Proposal evaluation procedure of the Expert Teams and the video tutorial.

Proposal evaluation criteria

The following criteria are reviewed in the proposal evaluation procedure:

compliance with the research criteria;
scientific quality and novelty of research or tasks to be performed;
the project’s impact on the advancement of the scientific discipline;
feasibility of the research project;
scientific achievements of the principal investigator, including publications in renowned academic press/ journals;
evaluation of other projects performed by the principal investigator and funded by the NCN or from other sources;
justification of the costs as regards the subject and scope of research;
justification of the choice of the host institution for the foreign fellowship, including academic rank of a foreign research institution, accuracy of the choice of the research institution and impact on the development of the principal investigator’s scientific career;
development of the proposal and compliance with other criteria of the call text.

Proposals are evaluated pursuant to the proposal evaluation criteria applicable to the SONATINA call.

Merit-based evaluation

Proposals are evaluated by inter-panel teams comprising experts appointed under particular research domains, i.e. HS, ST or NZ.

Experts are selected by the NCN Council among outstanding Polish and foreign researchers holding at least a PhD degree. Expert Teams are set up for each edition of the call. The composition of the Expert Team depends on the number and topics of proposals submitted under particular domains.

Call results

The call results are published on the NCN website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision by the NCN Director within 6 months of the proposal submission date, by the end of September 2023.

Open access publication of research results

Together with other European cOAlition S research funding agencies, the National Science Centre is a member of cOAlition S. Pursuant to the Open Access Policy adopted by the NCN, all research results produced under NCN-funded research projects must be made available in full and immediate open access. The policy does not cover the publication of monographs, monograph chapters and peer-reviewed collected works.

In accordance with the principles of Plan S, the National Science Centre recognizes the following publication routes as compliant with its Open Access Policy:

publication in open access journals and on open access platforms registered, or with pending registration, in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ);
publication in subscription journals (hybrid journals), as long as the Version of Record (VoR) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is published, by the author or publisher, in an open repository immediately upon the article’s online publication;
publication in transformation journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of so-called transformative agreements, inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry).

Articles must be made available using the CC-BY licence (in the case of transformation journals, the CC-BY-SA licence can also be used). The CC-BY-ND licence can also be used (regardless of the publication route selected).

For more information on the Open Access publication rules/ instructions, as amended , please go here .

For more information, please read the Open Access instructions.

Additional information

Please read the Information for Applicants available on our website.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact us by e-mail: informacja@ncn.gov.pl or by phone

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Useful information

If you plan to submit a proposal under the SONATINA 7 call:

read the call documents included in the call text, in particular:
- Resolution on the terms and conditions of the SONATINA call for proposals ,
- proposal form template where you can find out about information and annexes required to complete the electronic proposal form in OSF;
- Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre as regards research projects;
read the proposal submission procedure;
decide how long the project should last: 24 or 36 months;
decide on the research institution to host the foreign fellowship and duration thereof: 3 to 6 months;
obtain a document confirming approval by the mentor from the research institution hosting the fellowship (in English);
draw up a document confirming that the principal investigator has earned a PhD degree and if the principal investigator is yet to earn a PhD degree, a declaration by the PhD supervisor or certificate by a competent institution of the forecasted PhD award date;
obtain data from the host institution that is required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal and the project (procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal);
draw up the following documents:
in Polish:
- description for the general public (1 standard page);
- work plan including research tasks;
- in the case of research projects carried out by a group of entities, a research project cooperation agreement;
- administrative declarations by the principal investigator and the host institution for the project;
in English:
- project’s abstract;
- description for the general public (1 standard page);
- work plan including research tasks;
- research project descriptions: short project description (up to 5 standard pages) and full project description (up to 15 standard pages);
- information on the research team, including information on the principal investigator, as required by the call text;
- information on the foreign research institution hosting the fellowship and justification for choosing that institution (up to 2 standard pages);
- document confirming research institution’s consent to host the foreign fellowship of the principal investigator;
- research project budget;
- in the case of a research project carried out in cooperation with a foreign partner, information on international cooperation as well as description of benefits that may result from such international cooperation;
- information on the data management plan concerning data generated or used in the course of a research project;
- information on the ethical aspects of the project, including any consents, opinions, permits and/or approvals necessary to carry out the project in compliance with generally applicable laws and best practices;
- in the case of research projects which include clinical trials with a medicinal product or a medical device, a detailed justification of the non-commercial nature of the trials;
- in the case of research projects covering research being performed or completed by the principal investigator, or with respect to which the principal investigator applies for funding under other NCN calls or from other sources, a description of similar research tasks with reasons justifying the need to have them funded under the project; and
- in the case of research projects to be carried out in a host institution that does not receive any operating support for research, information on research carried out over the last 2 years, together with a list of publications and information on research equipment and other instruments crucial to research.

Before the proposal is submitted to the NCN, please:

check if information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Verification of the proposal for completeness in OSF by pressing the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button does not guarantee that information has been entered correctly and that the required annexes have been attached;
disable editing of the final version of the proposal to the NCN;
download and sign the confirmation of proposal submission in the call (signature of the principal investigator and authorised representative of the institution); and
attach the confirmation of proposal submission with a signature.

Once you have filled out the form and attached the required annexes, the electronic proposal must be submitted to the National Science Centre in OSF via the Wyślij do NCN [Send to NCN] button.

Once the call for proposals has been closed:

evaluation of proposals will be carried out;
after each stage of evaluation, the funding decision of the NCN Director will be served;
if the proposal is recommended for funding, a research project funding agreement will be entered into; and
project will be performed pursuant to the funding agreement.

In the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements, the applicant may appeal against the decision of the NCN Director with the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council. The appeal must be lodged within 14 days of the effective service of the decision.

Call documents

Documents to be read before submitting a proposal to the NCN:

Documents concerning evaluation of proposals:

Documents to be read before commencing the NCN-funded project:

Weave-UNISONO call: important information for research teams from Poland

1. The budget of the Polish part of the project in the joint proposal should be calculated according to the following exchange rate:

In joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed in and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2022: 1 EUR= 4,5315 PLN
In joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed in and submitted via the OSF submission system from 1 January 2023 onwards: 1 EUR= 4,7244 PLN

2. NCN proposals processed in the OSF submission system in 2022, to which the exchange rate of 1 EUR = 4,5315 PLN applies, must be completed in and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2022 at 23:59:59. Otherwise, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case a Polish research team must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system, to which the exchange rate 1 EUR = 4,7244 PLN will apply. If a joint proposal has already been submitted to the lead agency, in which the budget of the Polish part of the project was calculated according to another exchange rate, information in the NCN proposal will be inconsistent with information in the joint proposal and may result in the proposal being rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria.

3. As of 1 January 2023, the updated Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral cooperation pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure shall apply.

4. Please consult the updated call documentation, including the Guidelines for Polish research teams (update will be available soon).

Lectures in complexity economics and forest ecology

We are continuing with our series of meetings with NCN Award 2022 winners. On 15 and 21 December, respectively, we will hear online talks by Karolina Safarzyńska from the University of Warsaw, who specialises in complexity economics, and Michał Bogdziewicz, a forest ecologist from the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań.

“Science in the Center” is a series of meetings with scientists organized by the NCN and the Copernicus Center Foundation. The lectures are delivered online and are streamed on the You Tube channel of the Copernicus Center.

On Thursday, 15 December, Karolina Safarzyńska, winner of the NCN Award 2022 for art, humanities and social sciences will deliver a talk entitled “Complexity Economics: the Future Is Now”.

A professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw, Karolina Safarzyńska is an interdisciplinary researcher, one of very few people in Poland to do research in experimental, behavioural and complexity economics in connection with climate change. She was given an NCN Award in recognition of her innovative theoretical models for the study of limited rationality, preference diversity and social interactions on climate policies.

A week later, on Wednesday, 21 December, we will meet Michał Bogdziewicz from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Warsaw. Bogdziewicz studies forest ecology, with an emphasis on seed years, i.e. years in which trees produce a particularly large quantity of seeds, and the impact of climate change on tree reproduction. His talk is entitled: “Hunger and Abundance: Tree Reproduction as an Unstable Foundation of Food Webs”.

Both talks will start at 6 pm and the audience will be able to ask questions.

The series kicked off with conversations with NCN Award winners for 2020 and 2021. In the new round, we have already heard a lecture by Piotr Wcisło. All events are available for replay online.

Pre-announcement of the JPND Call 2023

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) will shortly launch a new multinational call for proposals for Large scale analysis of OMICS data for drug-target finding in Neurodegenerative Diseases.

The project consortia must have a minimum of 3 eligible and independent partners requesting funding from at least 3 different countries participating in the call.

This will be a two-step call, expected to be launched in early January 2023, with a likely pre-proposal submission deadline in early March 2023. Further details will be provided at the launch of the call.

For further details, please check the JPND website.

Please note that this pre-announcement is for information purposes only. It does not create any obligation for the JPND consortium, nor for any of the participating funding organizations. The official call announcement, to be published later, shall prevail.

Contact:

dr Jadwiga Spyrka

Alicja Dyląg, tel.:

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Professor Leszek Kaczmarek on the ERC Scientific Council

Professor Leszek Kaczmarek, member of the NCN Council in 2010-2016, has just been appointed to the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. Composed of 22 eminent scientists, the Scientific Council is the most important body of the agency.

Professor Kaczmarek is a molecular biologist affiliated at the M. Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS. He heads BRAINCITY, a Centre of Excellence dedicated to the study of neuroplasticity and brain disease, set up as an International Research Agenda of the Foundation for Polish Science. Professor Kaczmarek is also a fellow of the Polish Academy of Sciences, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Academia Europea. In 2010-2016, he also sat on the NCN Council.

Founded in 2007 by the European Commission, the ERC is a leading European organisation established for the purpose of funding pioneering research.

Members of the ERC Scientific Council are appointed by the European Commission for a four-year term on the recommendations of an independent Identification Committee. One of the committee members is Professor Michał Karoński from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, one of the founders of the NCN and the President of the NCN Council in 2010-2016.

The President of the Scientific Council of the ERC is Professor Maria Leptin, and Professor Andrzej Jajszczyk, the NCN Director in 2010-2015, serves as one of its three Vice-Presidents.

The new Council members will begin their term on 1 January 2023. Alongside Professor Kaczmarek, these will include: Prof. Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University), Prof. Thomas Henzinger (Institute of Science and Technology, ISTA), Prof. Luke O’Neill (Trinity College), Prof. Björn Ottersten (University of Luxembourg).

The press release, along with new member profiles, can be found on the ERC website.

In November, the ERC once again awarded its Starting Grants to young researchers. The winners include four researchers based in Poland, who also carry out NCN grants.

Call 2023 Pre-Announcement

At the end of January 2023, the QuantERA II Consortium will announce a Call for Proposals in Quantum Sciences and Technologies – QuantERA Call 2023.

The Call will comprise two topics:

Quantum Phenomena and Resources
Applied Quantum Science

Funding proposals may be submitted by international consortia composed of at least 3 research teams from 3 countries participating in the call.

In order to facilitate the process of forming research consortia, we offer applicants a Partner Search Tool available here. This tool can be used by projects looking for partners and partners looking for projects.

More details: QuantERA website.

Contact: quantera@ncn.gov.pl

Physics in the Centre

On 7 December, at 6 pm, join us for an online lecture by Piotr Wcisło, the first in a new series of talks called “Science in the Centre”.

“Science in the Centre” is an initiative of the National Science Centre and the Copernicus Centre Foundation that offers live YouTube lectures by NCN Award winners. The first edition of the series was organised last year.

Piotr Wcisło is a physicist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University and winner of the NCN Award 2022 for physical sciences and engineering, as well as various NCN and ERC grants.

Tonight, he will talk about testing the limits of quantum theory. The broadcast will go live at 6 pm.

More talks, by Karolina Safarzyńska and Michał Bogdziewicz, are planned for 15 and 21 December, respectively.

More information about the series.

576 researchers with NCN grants

Nearly 491 million zlotys in basic research funding will go to researchers already affiliated with Polish host institutions and those who are still at the stage of planning their relocation to Poland. Below, you will find the ranking lists of successful projects for OPUS 23, PRELUDIUM 21 and POLONEZ BIS 2.

The three calls together attracted 4299 proposals with a total budget of more than 3 billion zlotys. Following a two-stage review process, our experts selected 576 of these, worth nearly 491 million in total, for a success rate of 13.4%.

OPUS winners

OPUS has a very broad formula. The call is open to researchers at all career levels, with no restrictions as to scientific degree, age or research experience. The only requirement for principal investigators is to demonstrate at least one paper, already published or accepted for publication, or at least one achievement in art or art and research (for those in the creative fields). Project may last 12, 24, 36 or 48 months and may involve the use of large international research equipment or cooperation with foreign partners.

As many as 266 researchers were awarded grants under OPUS 23: the largest number of grants will go to projects in physical sciences and engineering (ST) – 103; funding was also awarded to 89 proposals in life sciences (NZ) and 74 in art, humanities and social sciences (HS). The total budget of successful proposals exceeds 401.5 million zlotys.

Winners will take up issues such as, to name but a few, environmental protection, climate change, production and new solutions for our planet.

Dr Anne-Marie Weber-Elżanowska from the University of Warsaw will analyse the problem of sustainable economic reorientation and the importance of sustainable corporate governance for EU’s climate policy. Another researcher, Dr hab. Mariusz Majdański from the Institute of Geophysics, PAS, will develop a method for using the latest seismic techniques for time-lapse imaging designed to visualise the effects of climate change in Poland and their impact on critical zones. Dr hab. Łukasz Drewniak, assisted by teams from the University of Warsaw and the Lublin University of Technology, will work on a project entitled “Coal fly ash management: the microbial degradation of unburnt carbon”. The team reports that as much as 50% of fly ash cannot be reused (in construction or other sectors), primarily because of its concentration of toxic substances. The purpose of the project is to explore the avenues for using fly ash that has undergone a process of biodegradation.

Young researchers in PRELUDIUM

Organized by the National Science Centre, the PRELUDIUM call is designed to support young researchers by giving them an opportunity to acquire research experience as principal investigators even before they get a PhD degree. Researchers are eligible for grants of 70, 140 or 210 thousand zlotys for projects of 12, 24 or 36 months, respectively. Principal investigators under PRELUDIUM may not hold a PhD degree and they do not even need to be enrolled in a PhD program. Their NCN-funded project may focus on the subject matter of a planned PhD dissertation, but this is not a strict requirement.

PRELUDIUM 21 attracted 2163 proposals, 258 of which were awarded grants: 73 in art, humanities and social sciences, 88 in life sciences and 97 in physical sciences and engineering, with a total budget of more than 41.2 million zlotys. The list of winners includes three researchers who are still enrolled in a Master’s programme.

Winners of the call will study the problems of human and machine learning, as well as changes in the brain that occur during development.

Zuzanna Laudańska from the Institute of Psychology, PAS, will look into the way infants learn to sit up in order to understand how, if at all, the process impacts their vocal production and visual attention. To this end, she will rely on eye-tracking equipment to record the eye movements of children playing with their carers, and see how their visual attention on the mouth area evolves across the period of transition to independent sitting. Another winner, Marcin Sendera, will study machine meta-learning, focusing on more effective adaptation through attunement. The researcher explains that meta-learning allows the required number of data and computations to be reduced, which can have a positive impact on the environment and democratise research into artificial intelligence. In the life sciences panel, Klaudia Misiołek from the Institute of Pharmacology, PAS, will work on a project entitled “Developmental changes in the endogenous opioid system associated with altered sensitivity to reward during adolescence”. Based on previous observations and new research, the researcher will study a population of mice to determine how the opioid system changes in the period of adolescence in order to draw broader conclusions and put forward new research hypotheses concerning its mechanisms of action.

POLONEZ BIS attracts researchers from beyond Poland

POLONEZ BIS offers yet another round of attractive grants for researchers currently working outside Poland. The call is targeted at applicants with a PhD degree or at least four years of full-time research experience, who have not lived, worked or studied in Poland for a total of more than 12 months in the three years prior to the launch date of the call. The call offers grants to cover 24-month research projects, including salaries for principal investigators and research team members, scholarships for graduate students and PhD candidates, and other necessary project expenses.

The winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 will study a wide range of problems, including those related to space research. Dr Paweł Leon Swaczyna will arrive at the Space Research Centre, PAS, to work on a project entitled “Interstellar neighbourhood of the heliosphere revealed in neutral atom and pickup ion observations”, using data from the IBEX and New Horizons missions to study the interstellar conditions in the proximity of the heliosphere. The female winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 include, for instance, Dr Anna Becker, who will work at the Institute of Slavic Studies, PAS, focusing on the new multilingual situation in Polish higher education, and Prof. Dr hab. Anna Shalimova, who will test the impact of war-induced stress on the development of cardiovascular disease at the Medical University of Gdańsk.

The second round of POLONEZ BIS attracted 153 proposals, 52 of which, with a total budget of nearly 48.2 million zlotys, qualified for funding. Polish host institutions will soon welcome 18 new researchers in art, humanities and social sciences, 13 researchers in life sciences and 21 more in physical sciences and engineering.

POLONEZ BIS is funded jointly by the National Science Centre and the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND scheme.

OPUS 23 Call

PRELUDIUM 21 Call

POLONEZ BIS 2 Call

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